


A Tremendous Thing

by Elise_Davidson



Series: 40 Snapshots [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 20. Friends, 40 Snapshots, Established OT3, F/F, F/M, Friendship Bracelets, Group Homes, Multi, OT3, THISISATHREESOMEFICNOSWANQUEEN, arts and crafts, first OUAT fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 00:37:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7663351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elise_Davidson/pseuds/Elise_Davidson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma is busy with something; Regina and Hook are left to their own devices to figure out what.  Established OT3 CaptainSwanQueen.</p><p>ETA: This is an OT3 fic, a threesome fic.  If you are looking for SwanQueen, exit now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tremendous Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by LegacySoulReaver; any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> Established CaptainSwanQueen in an indeterminate timeline where Emma and Hook have done their dark one thing, but before Regina has expelled the demon that is the Evil Queen.
> 
> ETA: THIS IS A THREESOME FIC. If you are looking for SwanQueen, EXIT NOW.

20\. Friends

Hook sidled his gaze in Regina’s direction as she entered the sheriff’s office. She opened her mouth and promptly shut it as she followed Hook’s nod to where Emma sat in the inner office, hands busy and face drawn in tight concentration.

Regina raised an eyebrow. “What, exactly, is she doing?” She crossed her arms in bemusement and narrowed her eyes in an attempt to see what Emma’s hands were doing.

“I have no idea, love,” Hook replied, the confusion just as apparent in his tone as it was on Regina’s face. “When I asked…” He chuckled darkly. “She kicked at me.”

“She…kicked at you?”

Hook snorted lowly, a sound that was somewhere between amused and disbelieving. “Her hands were busy—besides, if I’ve learned anything from you,” he leaned close to murmur against her ear, “It’s that it’s best not to poke a sleeping witch.”

Regina smirked. “Best if another witch does the poking then, hm?” She bumped Hook’s shoulder almost affectionately with her own and sauntered into the office.

True to Hook’s word, Emma snapped her foot in Regina’s general direction. “M’busy,” Emma bit out, tensing her shoulder up to hide what she was doing.

“I see this, princess,” Regina replied dryly. “And what are we doing?”

“None of your business,” Emma snapped, burying her hands beneath the desk as she finally made eye contact with Regina. Her face was slightly pink in the cheeks and on her ears—she almost looked embarrassed, but the annoyance was taking over completely before Regina could make sense of it. “What do you want?”

Regina wiped the surprise from her face quickly at the dismissive tone. “It’s dinner time; I thought the three of us could—“

“I’ve got things to finish here and then I’ll meet up with you later. Anything else?”

“No,” Regina said quietly, still a bit startled at the brush off. She ignored the strike of hurt that slashed across her at Emma’s blatant ignorance of both Regina and Hook.

Hook swiped a thumb idly across his bottom lip as Regina exited and situated herself against his side in thought. “She wasn’t very forthcoming, was she?”

Regina scoffed, but in a rare show of need, leaned her head against Hook’s shoulder. “She kicked at me too.”

Hook snorted again.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Two days later, Emma acted as if her odd behavior was nothing. The weird fugue she had been in before seemed to have passed, and though Hook and Regina suspected, Emma was no more forthcoming about her “project” than she had been before.

The only silver lining was that Emma was practically bouncing on her heels in a cheerful mood that rarely came over her as they set the table for dinner the next night.

Regina moved cautiously, slender fingers shifting silverware and adjusting plates though they needed no adjusting. “You seem in good spirits, Miss Swan.”

Emma smiled at her, bright like the lightest magic Regina had ever only seen from the first-born of the Charmings. “Things are okay, yeah. Quiet the last couple of days, but it’s Storybrooke—the most I have to deal with is making sure the three blind mice don’t run amuck around Old Mother Hubbard’s place.”

Hook remained behind the stove, obediently stirring spaghetti sauce but retaining eye contact with Regina in silent communication. “You seemed very distant, love—some of us were worried.”

Emma shrugged off the concern as she opened the fridge and grabbed three cans of soda. “I was working on something important,” she replied, her tone still as cheerful as ever. There was, now, a note of expectation in her voice. “And I finished it.”

The oven timer gave a high-pitched ding, and Emma practically twirled to pull out the garlic bread.

Hook slid to Regina’s side. “Does she seem…”

Regina’s face couldn’t hide the confusion and shock. “Off her rocker?”

Hook raised an eyebrow. “I was going to say crazy, love.”

“Same thing,” Regina snorted.

Emma placed the garlic bread on the table. “Something wrong?” she asked, confusion suddenly crossing her face. “You two look…” She stopped for a moment, as if trying to find the right word. “Well…spooked, honestly.”

“Fine, Miss Swan,” Regina replied breezily, composing her blank-slate composure faster than Hook could. “You just seem…very energetic tonight.”

Emma shrugged, as if the observation were unimportant, and continued the dinner preparation by taking over the stove and mixing the sauce with the cooked pasta.

Dinner was nice enough, if simple. No one could ever argue that spaghetti, garlic bread, and salad didn’t make a decent supper after all. The conversation flowed by what appeared to be sheer virtue of Emma’s enthusiasm, though the return from Hook and Regina was stilted. Emma didn’t seem to notice either way, as if she were just glad for the company after her self-imposed exile.

Regina still couldn’t get a read on what had put Emma in such a good mood, and she herself was still a bit on edge after the distance of the last few days. Hook didn’t seem to be faring any better, even as they washed the pots and dishes together, with Regina washing, Hook rinsing, and Emma drying and putting away.

Hook almost drew the line when Emma started humming as they cleaned; the woman had been bloody insufferable for the last three days, and now, she seemed like the sun was shining directly from the room that housed them, like she would go super-nova if Regina and Hook got too close and added to the gravity of her brightness.

While Hook had nearly drawn the line, Regina did. “Okay, Miss Swan…what, exactly, died inside of you the last few days and then resurrected itself?” She threw down the towel she had used to dry her hands. “I’ve barely heard more than three peeps out of you, and those peeps have only been to toss either one of us out the door in favor of your little project.”

Emma sighed, a genuine note of unhappiness fueling it. “It was important. Can we just finish up the dishes and I promise, I’ll tell you all about it?”

Hook considered, even as Regina’s gaze burned. He glanced at the queen over Emma’s shoulder, blue eyes dark and curious. “Perhaps give her that, love?” he asked casually, hoping she sensed he was on her side, but knowing that Emma needed to not feel attacked.

Regina glared at him furiously, but seemed to get it. “Fine,” she said stiffly before stalking out of the kitchen to wait for Emma’s explanation elsewhere.

“She’s probably just calming down,” Emma mumbled, and stared at the plate she had been about to put away. “I probably should have said something sooner.”

Hook rinsed the last dish to hand off, and dried his hands before sliding an arm across Emma’s shoulders. “We were worried, Swan.”

Emma looked at him, eyes bright and intense. “I swear, it’s important—“ She clutched her fists over the drying dish in front of her. “It was important.”

Hook nodded and kissed her hair quickly and affectionately. “Then come tell us.” He walked out of the room as well, ignoring the uncertain slump of Emma’s shoulders as he looked for Regina in the next room, only to find she was on the balcony surrounding the house.

Regina stared into the cold frigid air as Hook crowded her personal space. “You’d think she’d tell us what it was about if it were that important.”

Hook curled his arm around Regina’s shoulders, ignoring her indignant denial in favor of pressing his lips against her temple. “Perhaps she truly wanted to surprise either one of us. You know as well as I that it would be hard to do that to either one of us.”

Regina shrugged, the lines of her body still tense and unforgiving. “I suppose,” she said, but her voice was dejected and unsure.

Hook sighed, the hand of the arm curled around Regina’s neck coming up to stroke her cheek. “She had her reasons, love.”

“Yes, I had my reasons,” Emma’s voice interrupted their quiet contemplations. When they turned, the blonde was fidgeting against the doorjamb, something clutched in her fist. She looked uncertain and unbearably vulnerable. “It was important,” she stressed again, though her stance didn’t indicate confidence.

“What was it, love?” Hook asked, breaking away from Regina but not moving closer. He recognized the coiled tension in Emma’s frame, the one that meant she would sooner douse herself in tar and light a match than actually say the words stuck behind her teeth.

Emma clenched her jaw. “Growing up…wasn’t easy.”

Regina tensed beside of Hook but didn’t turn. “Growing up never is.”

Even Hook straightened a bit beside of her, his casual frame wrought with the reluctance of thinking about the past.

Emma seemed to steel herself though, her fist still tight. “One thing I’ll say for group homes is that they were always big on arts and crafts.” Her fingers curled. “Seriously, three, sometimes four or five days a week, we had to do stuff like make necklaces, or weave, or make ashtrays.”

Regina finally turned, regarding her in the thin, bluish moonlight that washed Emma’s skin so pale that it looked like porcelain and she contemplated how it made Emma look just as fragile. She didn’t realize that Hook had wrapped an arm around her waist until his hand tightened over her hip.

“So anyway,” Emma rushed on, her words forced and stuttered. “I made these…for both of you.” She opened her fists finally, and in her hands were two embroidery-thread bracelets. “Lily…well…” She cleared her throat quickly, as if the memory were just too painful. “She taught me how to braid friendship bracelets, even when the group homes couldn’t. She gave me the one off her wrist when we first really met…she used to say that they bound people.”

Emma squirmed in the resulting silence, her palms still open with the thread-bracelets on top.

Hook knew immediately which was his—the threads were tri-colored like the other, but his was definitely the one that was blue, gray, and green, the colors of the sea. They glowed ethereally in the moonlight, the gray almost looking silver.

Regina stared at the other one. The threads were purple, silver, and black, almost what her magic would look like when combined with Emma’s. Her fingers hesitated over Emma’s palm.

“It took me three days because I couldn’t remember how to braid it at first, and then I had to get the right colors,” Emma rushed on. “I’m sorry I wasn’t…that I…” She stopped, swallowed, and struggled to find words again that kicked against her throat. “I was just…really focused.”

Regina moved first then, plucking the bracelet from Emma’s palm. She studied the plaiting, noting that there were strands hanging off intentionally in a deliberate fashion. “If you’d focus on your magic lessons the way you did with this, I wouldn’t have so much trouble.”

Hook used the tip of his hook to drag the bracelet from Emma’s palm, scraping the sensitive skin as he did so. His stare was intense as he surveyed the colors under the moonlight. “It’s pretty, love.”

Emma seemed to visibly relax under their approval, and uncertainly rushed on in blurted words. “You don’t have to wear them, or even on your wrist…I tied them off with a slipknot, so they’ll fit pretty much anywhere.” Her pale cheeks were flushed now in the silvery moonlight. “Not there or anything, just…you know. You don’t have to wear them, is what I mean.”

Hook smiled toothily, comparing his bracelet to Regina’s. “Aye, I think we’ll come up with something.”

Regina simply smirked at him before snagging Emma into a hug. “Thank you,” she whispered quietly as Emma’s stuttered words came to a halt.

Hook’s hand was warm and welcome when it came across her neck, and both women understood the silence he gave in that no one had ever made anything for him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was a week later, when after Emma had finally tracked down the last of the twelve dancing princesses (and also managed to revive a juniper tree with Gold’s help, much to Hook and Regina’s consternation) that Emma saw her hard work on Regina and Hook’s bodies.

Emma grabbed a bottle of water from Regina’s fridge and padded silently up to Regina’s bedroom, where Hook and the queen still lie. She opened the door quietly, a sliver of light from the hallway lamp throwing warm illumination into the room. She didn’t close the door right away, because it was then she finally saw her bracelets.

Both were on their left ankles. The loose threads she had deliberately left over were scattered over their tangled feet, Hook’s skin sunned and golden, Regina’s skin alabaster and delicate. The introduced light made both of them stir, so Emma closed it quickly.

It was only upon closer inspection that Emma realized the threads around Hook’s ankle were purple, silver, and black, whereas the blue, gray, and green of the ocean decorated the fragile bones of Regina’s ankle.

Emma sighed contentedly before she shucked the tank top and shorts she had thrown on and slipped in between their bodies. Regina grumbled and Hook rolled his eyes without opening them, but Emma slid her foot between theirs, letting the threads of the bracelets caress the sensitive skin of her ankle.

Quickly falling asleep now that she had gotten her water, Emma sleepily tucked her head into Hook’s neck while wrapped her arm back around Regina’s hips. She would need to teach them how to make friendship bracelets.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from E.B. White's Charlotte's Web.
> 
> Edited 8/8/16 to specify the OT3/threesome aspect and to clear up a few other things.


End file.
